


can i be close to you

by smallblueandloud



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: HOWEVER she is being cared for by people she trusts in this fic, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Episode: s07e06 Adapt or Die, SOME might call this pre-sousa/daisy (those some would be me), also the time jumps take 18 hours Because I Said So, because daniel sousa chugs his respect women juice, daisy is out of it because of non consentual medical procedures, drug mention, she is kind of out of it but this fic is NOT creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallblueandloud/pseuds/smallblueandloud
Summary: She sets the communicator on one of the shelves and turns to Johnson, looking over the tablet. Sousa still isn’t clear on what, exactly, they’ve stuck Johnson in, but presumably it’s going to help her.“How does it look, Doc?” he asks.Simmons jumps, then holds a hand to her heart, turning towards him. She hasn’t dropped the tablet. “Agent Sousa. I didn’t see you there.” Her expression is measured, unreadable.(or, daniel sousa and jemma simmons keep each other company, sitting outside daisy's healing chamber)
Relationships: Jemma Simmons & Daniel Sousa, Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 69





	can i be close to you

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this immediately after watching 7x06, but i decided to wait to publish it until after the season finished. so! here we are! in this fic, the time jumps take 18 hours, because i'm DYING for these people to get some SLEEP. for god's sake. #LetThemRest
> 
> title is from "bloom (bonus track)" by the paper kites because i didn't have a title for this until five minutes ago. i honestly don't know if the song fits very well? but whatever, this is my legally mandated "essbie writes some skimmons after the season ends because she is trash" fic for s7. takes place in the direct continuity of my [previous such fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120072). 
> 
> thanks to al for being supportive, as always.

Agent Johnson is frowning in her sleep.

Sousa rubs the place where his leg meets the wooden one and watches her.

He’s not sure what kind of drugs the Malick kid shot them up with, but they seem to be fading, leaving him exhausted. The crash from all the excitement earlier can’t be helping. He doesn’t really want to move, even to go find a bed, which nearly every agent has offered him by now. He’s not sure he can _stand_ , much less walk to a bunk.

Besides, he’d promised Johnson he would stay with her.

“Enoch,” says a woman- Agent Simmons, Sousa remembers, the doctor. She walks into the room holding a rectangular tablet of some kind, speaking into some kind of future-radio-telephone-thing. “Make sure to do one last scan. I don’t want to risk this plane falling apart while we’re travelling.”

She sets the communicator on one of the shelves and turns to Johnson, looking over the tablet. Sousa still isn’t clear on _what,_ exactly, they’ve stuck Johnson in, but presumably it’s going to help her.

“How does it look, Doc?” he asks.

Simmons jumps, then holds a hand to her heart, turning towards him. She hasn’t dropped the tablet. “Agent Sousa. I didn’t see you there.” Her expression is measured, unreadable.

“Sorry,” he says. Her gaze flits over his leg, which is propped up on another chair, then goes back up to him. She frowns.

“I’m fine,” he says, before she can ask. “My leg will be fine, and I don’t want to find a bed. I promised Agent Johnson I’d stay with her.”

She gazes at him for another few seconds, her expression unreadable. Finally, she straightens her spine. “Thank you for getting her out of there.”

“It’s no problem,” he says. “Just what agents do for each other, right?”

He watches her reaction. He’s still not quite sure about this whole future-S.H.I.E.L.D. thing. Most of the agents seem like decent people, capable and trustworthy. But some of them...

He has no idea what to think about the odd one, Enoch. The quiet one - the one who got confused when she shook his hand, May - has barely said a word to him. And all he knows about Agent Simmons is that she’s playing with forces outside of her control.

She smiles at him, tight lipped. “Of course.”

She turns back to the tablet, swiping and tapping at turns. Sousa’s too far away to see what she’s doing, but he assumes it’s something related to the pod that Johnson is lying in. Eventually, she twists something, and the lights in the pod dim.

“To help her rest while it works,” explains Simmons, turning halfway towards him. She sets the tablet down. “She’ll recover. As for her powers, I can’t say what Malick did to her biology, not without drawing blood, and I don’t want to risk it yet. But I doubt he had the equipment to change her genetics. You said you were in a train?”

He nods. “Or something like it. I couldn’t see the entire surgery, but the Malick kid said that they drew some blood, some spinal fluid, and took out some- I don’t remember the exact words. Nodes, or something?”

He’s already said all of this to Agent Rodriguez, who he thinks briefed Simmons, but he still wants to make sure she knows. He never studied much medicine, but “spinal fluid” sounds like something important.

Simmons nods. “Yes. The pod will help with all of that. She’ll be _fine,_ Agent Sousa.”

She sounds a little too emphatic, like she’s trying to reassure someone who’s a lot more panicked than Sousa is. He’s worried about Johnson, sure, but there’s no use in panicking. He’s too tired for panic besides.

He sits back in his chair and watches Agent Simmons.

They have plenty of time. The time jumps take about eighteen hours, give or take, which almost everyone else is using to sleep. Which leaves him and Simmons, standing here outside of Agent Johnson’s pod.

Eventually, she sighs and pulls over a chair to sit next to the pod. She leans forward and rests her forehead on the glass. She’s obviously exhausted.

“You don’t need to wait here,” says Sousa, carefully. “I’m not going anywhere. If something goes wrong, I can call you.”

Simmons closes her eyes. “Thank you,” she says, “but I can stay. It’s really- I’m going to be here. I’m sure Daisy would understand if you wanted to take a nap.”

_Daisy, huh?_ he thinks.

“So what year are you guys from?” he asks.

Simmons turns her head slightly to glance at him. “2019.”

He sits back. “Wow, 2019. Do you guys have flying cars yet? Agent Johnson was showing me her- I guess it was a telephone? But it took color pictures too, and you didn’t even have to develop them.”

Simmons smiles. She’s not looking at him - more like staring into the space three feet to his right. “Yes, that was her phone. We don’t have flying cars yet- well, not commercially. S.H.I.E.L.D. has built a few in its time. But Howard Stark showcased a flying car at the Stark Expo in 1943, didn’t he?”

Sousa frowns, thinking back. “I guess he did. I’m surprised you know that, though. You guys still learn about us old fogies?”

“We learn the general facts of the second World War,” says Simmons, shrugging one shoulder. “But I know the specifics about that Expo because Steve Rogers was there.”

“Ah,” says Sousa, trying not to sound bitter. Of _course_ Captain America is famous. Of _course_ people learn more about him than the war. Rogers was a _good_ man, the consummate American. Everyone loved him.

Apparently he enjoys being in pain. “You like Captain America?”

Simmons closes her eyes. “More or less. Really, most of what I know about him was coincidental. The vast majority of information on Peggy Carter is still Steve Rogers-related, unfortunately.”

Her eyes fly open, and she sits up quickly. “That is to say-”

Sousa laughs. Finally, a genuine show of emotion from Simmons, and it’s about Peggy. She’s still got his back, it seems, even though he’s- wherever he is. “You’re a fan of Peggy’s, huh?”

Simmons blushes. “A bit, yes.”

“Must’ve been fun to pretend to be her at the base.”

She smiles. “Yes.”

“You know,” he says, glancing over at Johnson. “When we met, I thought your accent was fake?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, chuckling. “I told Agent Johnson - who was pretending to be from the CIA at the time, although I guess she was there to rescue you - I told her that your accent was the worst fake accent I’d ever heard.”

“Oh, dear,” says Simmons, but she’s smiling. Sousa counts it as a win. She doesn’t seem _naive,_ exactly, or innocent, but the fact that her tight control cracked after only a few minutes of conversation makes him think that she doesn’t enjoy hiding things.

And that she’s probably lonely.

She’s wearing a wedding ring. He wonders where her husband is.

“And Agent Johnson- you know, I should’ve realized you two were friends right there, because she smiled and said, ‘You should say that to her.’”

Simmons laughs suddenly. “I can’t believe she hasn’t teased me about that yet.”

“She’ll get around to it,” he says. “Probably just saving it for the right moment. I guess I just spoiled that for her, actually.”

“I’ll pretend to be wounded,” says Simmons, glancing briefly at Johnson before looking back at him and smiling. “I’m a marvelous liar, you know.”

She managed to get into a top-secret, ultra-secure S.H.I.E.L.D. base with nothing but a fake id, an accent, and confidence, and then accused _them_ of being imposters. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says.

They both smile at each other for a moment, but Simmons’ grin quickly fades. She turns back to Johnson, pulls the tablet off the shelf, scrolls through it again. The corners of her mouth tighten.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she says, putting it down again. “Just-” she hesitates. “I’m tired of waiting.”

He studies her. She looks tired, like she hasn’t slept in a while. He thinks he knows what she means.

“When did you and Agent Johnson meet?”

She smiles faintly, running her hand over the glass hood of the pod. “It was- five years ago, I think? She was a hacker against S.H.I.E.L.D., actually, can you believe it?”

Sousa frowns. “A hacker is-”

“Someone who attacks us through...” she frowns, considering. “Through technology? We keep most of our information on computers, where it’s most easily accessible. Daisy- Hackers are people who break through defenses and steal information stored on computers, or change data, or shut down cameras. You saw her doing some of it earlier, when she was opening the doors for Coulson and May.”

“Yeah,” says Sousa, thinking about it. “So she was stealing S.H.I.E.L.D. information?”

“Yes.”

“And you _recruited_ her?”

“Oh, no, _I_ didn’t,” says Simmons, smiling faintly. “I was a scientist who had never been in the field before. It was my first mission. _Coulson_ recruited her.”

“That... makes more sense,” he says. Coulson recruited _him,_ after all, and Sousa still doesn’t know why. “But now she’s a full agent.”

“She’s been a full agent for years,” says Simmons. “Eventually, she got her powers, which made her an even better fighter. But she was invaluable before we knew she was an- before she had powers.”

“Of course,” says Sousa. “She’s pretty tough.”

“Yes,” she says, smiling. “Yes, she is.”

He lets the conversation lapse, because he really is exhausted, and it’s hard to think of things to say when he just wants to sit there and fall asleep. It takes too much energy to just stay vaguely awake for him to also focus on trying to pull Simmons out of her head, no matter how interested he is in the future of S.H.I.E.L.D. Or, well, its past, he supposes. It’s already happened, after all.

Eventually, he manages to pull himself out of his fugue. Agent Simmons is watching Johnson’s face. It’s the wrong angle for him to see her expression, but it looks like she’s falling asleep too.

“So you’re a scientist?”

She blinks heavily, and sits up. “Pardon?”

“You’re a scientist? I thought you were a doctor.”

She frowns, rubs at one eye. “I’m trained as a scientist in biochemistry,” she says, and turns to face him, leaning against the side of the pod. “But I serve as the team medic, yes.”

“Did you build-” he gestures vaguely at Johnson. “This?”

She glances slightly to the side, at the pod and everything it contains. “I’m sorry, but that’s classified.”

“Because the machines can steal our memories?”

“Yes.”

He chuckles. “It’s a better reason for classifying information than some others that I’ve heard.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “It is what it is.”

They sit there in silence for a few more minutes.

Sousa’s doing his best to think through the fog in his brain and find another question, but he doesn’t have to. Something starts beeping. Simmons jumps up, pushes her chair away, and grabs the tablet to begin swiping and tapping again.

Inside the glass, Johnson begins to squirm as the lights grow brighter. She’s frowning, again, after her face had relaxed over the course of his conversation with Simmons.

“What’s going on?”

Simmons doesn’t look at him. “She’s waking up. The pod can’t do anything else for her. What she needs now is some food, some water, and real sleep.”

She makes a series of coordinated taps, then lets the hand holding the tablet fall to the side, stepping back. The entire glass top of the pod lifts up, remarkably silent for something that must be heavy.

It’s things like this that don’t let him forget that he’s dealing with people from the _future._ Their technology can do things that he’s never dreamed of - and also work without creaking.

Agent Johnson’s eyes open slowly. Simmons is bent over her already, so Sousa doesn’t move. It’s always disorienting to wake up after being passed out, even more so when there are people peering at your face. He’s not going to add to that.

“Wha-” mumbles Johnson. “What- where am I?”

She blinks heavily, looking up at Agent Simmons, who is reading her tablet. “Jemma?”

Simmons sets the tablet down and puts a hand on Johnson’s shoulder. “Hey, Daisy. How are you feeling?”

Her voice is gentle, but deeply relieved, in a way that Sousa knows intimately. He realizes who she was trying to reassure earlier.

“My mouth tastes like- like something died in it,” says Johnson, her eyes falling shut. “There was- there were needles.”

“Yes,” says Simmons, her voice quiet. “Yes, Daisy. He drew some blood and some fluid from your spine, as well as took some of your nodes.”

“My-” Agent Johnson swallows. “Are they gone?”

“The pod regenerated the nodes and the skin he broke,” says Simmons.

“I mean my powers.”

Simmons smiles, vaguely. “I don’t know,” she says, and brushes back a bit of Johnson’s hair. “I would need to draw blood, and I don’t want to do that until you’ve eaten something and had some rest. But I doubt it.”

“Alright,” says Johnson, blinking again. “Sounds like- sounds like a plan.”

She’s leaning into Simmons’ touch. Sousa’s never had a traumatic medical procedure the way she did, but he’s been held in place to be beaten up before, which he thinks must’ve felt a little similar. Afterwards, he avoided human contact for a while. It felt too much like the bruising grip on his shoulders, even when it was just someone shaking his hand.

But Johnson is leaning _into_ Simmons’ hand on her arm, pushing her head into Simmons’ shoulder the way that Sousa’s mom’s cat used to with people it really cared about. That takes trust. That takes a _lot_ of trust, on the unconscious level, since she’s still very clearly out of it.

“Daisy?” says Simmons. “Daisy, I need you to stay with me. You need to drink some water, and I can’t carry you-”

“I can help,” says Sousa, pulling his leg down from the chair and standing quickly. “I can carry her, if you need me to.”

“Oh-” says Simmons, half-turning back towards him. She’d clearly forgotten his presence. “Are you sure?”

He steadies himself. He’s carried Agent Johnson once already today. He can handle a few more steps. “Yes.”

“Thank you,” she says, and looks back down at Johnson, who’s fallen asleep again. “Her room is- it’s this way. If you could just-”

“Sure,” he says. He waits for Simmons to disentangle herself from Johnson, and then steps forward, lifts her carefully into his arms. His back is going to be complaining about this later, but that’s not a problem for right now. “Lead the way.”

She takes him out of the pod room, down a few doors until they come to the last one in the row. He braces himself against the wall and averts his eyes while she types in the code.

“Right here,” she says, walking inside. He follows her. The bunk is narrow enough that there’s barely any room to maneuver, but he manages to set Johnson down on the bed with minimal jostling.

Johnson frowns, squints up at him. “Sousa?”

“Hey,” he says. “You’re gonna be okay. Agent Simmons has you now.”

She smiles, her eyes crinkling at the sides. “Thank you for staying.”

“Of course,” he says, smiling back. He would have stayed for days, if needed.

She falls back asleep.

“The pod is still- it reacts with people differently,” says Simmons. When he turns to her, she’s entwined her fingers, and she moves her hands up and down as she talks. “Especially since she already had the drugs in her system. May was nowhere near this tired, when she-”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Sousa, holding up a hand, “and I don’t particularly need to. You’re the one who knows what’s going on.”

“Yes,” she says, glancing around. “I suppose that’s true.”

He takes the cue from her and looks around as well. He _knows_ it’s rude, that Johnson never invited him in and that he should be leaving now, but he can’t help his curiosity. He’s too tired to stop himself.

There’s a hook on the back wall of the bunk. He recognizes the jacket as the one that Simmons was wearing earlier.

She follows his gaze and blushes.

“You knew the code,” he realizes.

“I _set_ the code,” she corrects. Even though she’s blushing, she lifts her chin, as if daring him to argue.

Instead, he looks down, to where her wedding ring is glinting in the light. “Is that for her?”

Simmons glances down, then puts out her hand to look at it. “Sort of? It’s complicated. My-”

She sighs, turns around, and grabs a picture frame from the corner behind her. She offers it to him. In it, there’s a smiling Simmons, a grinning Johnson with much shorter hair, and a curly-haired man.

“Is this him?”

She nods. “It’s complicated, but yes. That’s my- our- that’s Fitz.”

“Where is he now?” asks Sousa. He winces, realizing immediately that Fitz is probably- lost.

Sure enough, her expression shuts down, but she doesn’t say what he’s expecting. “That’s classified as well.”

“Really,” he says, but doesn’t fight her on it. He wonders, vaguely, if this arrangement leaves Agent Johnson open to seeing other people, but he’s too tired to ask tonight. “Well, then. I will leave Agent Johnson in your expert care. Thank you for letting me keep you company, Agent Simmons.”

She doesn’t completely drop the coldness, but she does smile at him, slightly. “Thank you for making the wait bearable,” she says.

He tips his imaginary hat at her. “Goodnight.” Then he makes his way out of the bunk, closing the door behind him.

No wonder Simmons was so concerned, and so devoted. She’d spent the entire conversation with Johnson’s pod as her center of gravity, orbiting around it. A good doctor - and nothing more - might’ve kept their distance.

He sighs. He’s glad Johnson has someone, he decides. She’s obviously been through a lot, and things aren’t over yet. It’s good that she has someone she can rely on, someone she knows, someone she obviously trusts very deeply. He hopes he can provide some part of that, too, eventually. He has no idea how these modern relationships work, but if they mean he has a chance to take Agent Johnson out to dinner he’s not complaining.

He stops in the middle of the corridor and thinks. He’s exhausted, and every step feels like it takes more energy than he has. But he’s also _starving,_ and he’s not going to be able to sleep until he eats something.

Sousa leaves Daisy Johnson with Dr. Simmons and goes about trying to find a sandwich.

**Author's Note:**

> i am fsk trash, but i have to admit that dousy is possibly the CUTEST THING i have EVER SEEN on tv, so like, polyamory for the win! daisy has two hands. or three hands? two hands and a leg for sousa?
> 
> bad joke?
> 
> anyways, hope you enjoyed! if you want more fsk, or more poly stuff more generally, come say hi [on tumblr](https://smallblueandloud.tumblr.com) and prompt me!


End file.
